All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

The "gas on gas" stove was a mid 20th century way to modernize the heat in apartments that were originally gas lit and built to have a cast iron coal stove at one end and often a coal fireplace at the other. Picture an old fashioned range, then tack a space heater on the end. It has to be vented to a flue. They're a high wire act for the landlord because they're unrepairable for practical purposes, no parts. And it gets awful cold at the other end of the railroad apartment.

When my last one died before the original tenant moved out so I could reno, I replaced it with a standard range and a ventless space heater. She's been there 15 years and is apparently determined to go out feet first.

Daniel, The water heater might work, I guess a lot depends on your heat loss and how much of the unit has exterior exposure. An attached rowhouse would have windows just in the front and back, lowering the loss.

Just to be clear, I'm talking about regular hot water baseboard radiators, just running off a domestic water heater instead of a boiler. I think the last one I had installed was about $5k. Materials are about $2k of that. The only exotic part is a stainless or bronze circulator.

An alternative, which I had done but have since replaced as it was noisy and had lots of standby loss, is a small boiler that also heats the domestic hot water using a indirect WH as a zone. There may even be a high efficiency condensing boiler option if you can vent it through the wall. But those are so pricey it makes no sense if you're not paying for the heat.

Big question is how large are your units? When I got rid of the gas/gas stoves I replaced them with hydronic baseboard run off of a gas domestic water heater. Works like a charm for smaller units, mine are 450 ft. When I was contemplating individual heat in a place with steam and larger apartments, my number one choice was hydronic ceiling radiant off a boiler. The ceilings were a mess anyway. Essentially you run plastic pipe back and forth on the ceiling and cover it with 3/8 drywall.

David, I considered separating out the heat on my 4U, but realized that the cost recovery wasn't between providing heat or not, but in the error or difference between what I added into the asking rent for heat and what it actually cost. It just didn't make sense to spend upwards of $20k to tear out all those cast iron radiators and install 4 new systems.

City here says 70 day and 65 night. The last owner of my new 4U purchase with steam heat claimed he spent $12k/yr on oil!! I put in a new properly sized gas boiler, set the thermostat to 70 and locked it down. Tenant calls complaining of how cold it is, the heat isn't on! Figuring there was a malfunction of the new system, I run up there, and it's 70 deg and she's wearing a tank top and shorts. "why don't you put on some clothes if you're cold" says I. "That's ********!" says she. I then have to point out that the radiator being cold doesn't mean the heat is off, it just means the thermostat is satisfied. It was like talking to the wall.

At least the Jan bill was under $600 and that section 8 tenant just moved out. No more of that for me, the damn seller put her in while the short was in contract. Nasty trick, he didn't even get over market at all.

Yes. The owner is irrelevant, anything over 4 is stabilized.

The vendor came back with $2.2k for carpet and $4k for the vinyl. I think I'm going to get the Allure 12x36 planks and metal stair nosings and do it myself. I've laid thousands of feet of click laminate.

I was absolutely there, and corrected him when I detected an error, like him measuring the interior width of the building on a wall with a chimney. He had a laser tape and measured every single room. But he never actually went outside and measured the structure. Even so, you don't get off by 7 feet in that case by accident.

Ryan, there's no extenuating physical reasons for the footage error. It's a rowhouse, with a ground floor extension. All living space above ground, flat roofs. They each only needed 4 numbers: L & W of the main building and the extension. Neither came close. In fact, #1 drew the width as 2' wider than actual, but had the other dims so far off as to still come in 20% under! Both lenders have said "tough" when I've complained about the defects.

What can you say about the way that value by sales, rents and replacement magically fall within 1.3% of each other? I believe that's statistically extremely unlikely. It's one reason I believe the footage errors are not accidents, they're to help the grooming of the final numbers.

What's really a riot is that one of the comps was the same, and somehow they got different numbers from it: $/GBA- $114/ft vs $137/ft., $/bedroom- $30k vs $46k. Somehow they got different GBA numbers, but that still can't account for the bedroom difference.

I'd be happy to post the relevant page from each appraisal if you like.

Frankly, my impression of the appraisal process is this: they glance at some comps, instantly decide what they think the value is, then groom all the numbers to support what they decided, doctoring the drawing for sq ft if need be. I thought it was remarkable on a Nov appraisal of my 3 family for $325k that every method of evaluation: rents, rooms, units, GBA and bedrooms, came within a $9k range, less than a 3% variation w just one outlier, replacement being $340k. The joker was he undersized the footage by 20% with measurements so bad it's hard to believe they're accidental, and I held the end of the tape for him.

But the one I just received is a true work of art, his 3 different methods of valuation fall within a 1.3% range of $270k, varying only $3,500! What precision! What obvious nonsense. Not only did this one undermeasure by 15% (he drew the length of the rowhouse off by 7') he didn't even bother to fill in the fields for valuation by unit, room, bedroom and GBA. Does anyone know if it's normal practice for the appraiser to send a flunky to measure and photograph the property? I didn't think so.

So now I have 2 crap appraisals 20% apart, I guess I'll roll the dice again, it'll be worth it if I can refi from a 5.5% 30 year to a 3.125% 15 year. I think I'm going to call Citibank and tell them to reverse the charges, as I didn't get what I paid for. I can easily prove the sq ft measurement, on which most of the appraisal is based, is crap.